Review Of The Year – 2016

And so, as it must, 2016 lurches to a close. I’m not going into details about the year itself – just go on the BBC iPlayer and let Charlie Brooker do the job so much better than I ever could. But in a year with a 133 reviews (not quite my record) and a near 50% increase in my visitors (which I reckon is due to the face-lift the blog got early this year to a tile-based format), and, most importantly, the fact that I’ve done it every year since the blog started*, I figure it’s time to take a look at what I’ve read, what you should read out of what I’ve read and what you shouldn’t read out of what I’ve read. Off we go…

Minor awards first of all:

Stupidest Explanation For A Sinister Laughing Shadow:

SPOILER ALERT: A fringe category, true, but The Mystery Of The Laughing Shadow takes this one with the fact that the villain is an Australian and has a kookaburra who keeps returning to him whenever he tries to get rid of it and has a habit of making its trademark laugh whenever the villain is threatening the Three Investigators in a way that he can only be seen in shadow. Whatever. I just love this explanation, dumb even for a kids’ book. But the cover artist clearly didn’t read the book…

Biggest Letdown:

The Four Armourers by Francis Beeding – I loved Death Walks In Eastrepps, but this is utter tosh and deathly boring at the same time. And that cover… SIT UP WITH BEEDING! I suppose that might be the only way to get to the end of the book if he comes round your house and doesn’t let you go to bed before he reads it to you.

Biggest Defiance Of Physics:

Death On The Riviera by John Bude is loads of fun, but the villain’s method for something late in the narrative beggars belief. It requires a feat that requires a lot of practice but would be fatal if you get it wrong. So how the @!%$ do you practise it?

Crappest Locked Room Murder:

The Strings Of Death by Oscar de Muriel. A book that really can’t decide what it wants to be, but a locked room that isn’t much better than forgetting about the unlocked window. Fair enough, but don’t sell it as a locked room murder…

Best Treatise On Fingerprint Evidence:

The Red Thumb Mark by R Austen Freeman. Shame that it’s sold as a murder mystery instead, because as that, it falls incredibly short of the target. The debut novel for a classic crime writer and contains everything necessary to keep me away from the author’s work in the future.

Oddest Title:

Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah would really make more sense if it was called Open Casket… Although H C Bailey’s Slippery Ann comes pretty close. That one’s named after an obscure name for a card game, by the way, so get those dirty thoughts out of your mind…

Best Book by a Fellow Blogger:

OK, there’s only one**, but Sarah Ward’s A Deadly Thaw is always worth another mention.

Best Joke At The Expense Of Ronald Knox:

That section from The Sinking Admiral by the Detection Club. Nice one, Len. I know only a small percentage of the readers are going to get it, but it’s well worth your time reading this post before reading the book. Trust me.

Thank God It Wasn’t The First One:

My first John Rhode/Miles Burton book this year, before my obsession kicked into overdrive, was Early Morning Murder which is bloody awful. Thank goodness I’d already enjoyed The Claverton Affair last year…

One for the mathematicians, but if you take the authors that I’ve read this year and work out how many of their books that I’ve read, then every number you get is from the Fibonnacci sequence – 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… OK, I have to distinguish between “written by Martin Edwards” and “edited by Martin Edwards”, and I’ve treated pseudonyms as different writers, but I still think that’s pretty cool. Which, of course, says a lot about me…

Most Reviewed Authors:

5 Books: Miles Burton and Paul Doherty

8 Books: Michael Jecks

13 Books: John Rhode

No big surprises there, really. My newfound fascination with Rhode/Burton/Street has made me end up with plenty of his books to choose from – and plenty more to track down at if I can find them at affordable prices.

On a serious-ish note, if you have any Rhode books that aren’t listed on my bibliography page that you’d be willing to part with for a tenner or so each, then do get in touch. But don’t bother if you’re the owner of the sole copy of Murder At Lilac Cottage listed on Abebooks – £1600 is a little out of my price range.

Biggest Apology:

Due to all sorts of reasons, I’ve neglected some of the cracking looking releases from both the British Library and Dean St Press, the two main re-releasers of lost classics. Expect that to be rectified in the New Year. But sorry, anyway.

Best TV Show:

Well, I did like the second series of Scream, with some nifty plot developments to explain the ending of series one, but the final reveal was pretty obvious. But for sheer entertainment and clever mysteries, Death In Paradise takes this one. And it’s back next week, over here at least…

Best New Mystery:

Well, I did my top ten earlier in the month, but if I had to pick one, it’s Painkiller by N J Fountain – it’s probably ruined the unreliable narrator genre for me by doing something clever with it – but with an imminent paperback release, you really shouldn’t miss this one.

Well, if you want something that is easy to acquire, then Let Him Lie by Ianthe Jerrold is well worth your time. But as it’s been a bit of a Rhode/Burton year for me, then I’ll go for Peril At Cranbury Hall by John Rhode. Good luck, as ever, finding a copy…

The best of those… well, the odd thing is, those aren’t the best twelvish books reviewed this year, but there were a couple of lean months and a couple absolutely chockful of mystery goodness. But if I had to pick one… Distress Signals comes very close, a classic old-school twisty thriller without the need for an unreliable narrator, even more impressive as it’s Catherine Ryan Howard’s debut. A High Mortality Of Doves comes close as well, a beautifully evocative recreation of the post-WWI era and a devilishly constructed mystery as well, but as I’ve mentioned more than a few times before, the best mystery-thriller that I’ve read this year is N J Fountain’s Painkiller. No surprise to me as N J (aka Nev) was one of the inspirations for the blog with the Mervyn Stone mysteries (which you still need to read, by the way, or listen to, in the case of the unbearably awesome The Axeman Cometh – review here.) Now applying his writing to the serious mainstream thriller, Painkiller is even better than these – a moving thriller with a sympathetic protagonist and plot developments that you won’t see coming. It’s not often that I get the urge to read a book again – but this is already overdue a re-read.

So there we go, 2016 fades into the distance and we’ve got lots to look forward to in 2017. Honest.

*Not actually true as the blog started in December 2010. Needless to say, I didn’t bother with a summary that year.

That’s a very impressive row of Rhode books you have there. Great round up post. The minor awards were very entertaining. I’m glad you included Let Him Lie by Jerrold, as it’s one of my favourite reads of this year too.

Hi Puzzle Doctor,I’ve a lot of books to catch up on next year.Namely, Paul Doherty,Kate Ellis,and Michael Jecks who I’ve started reading as well.As well as the DS Jessica Daniel novels. The next Bryant and May novel sounds intriguing as well.Anyway, happy new year.

Finding an unread author with a large enough and attainable enough back catalogue gets harder the more you read. It becomes less likely that you’ll have missed someone who can become a favourite, I suppose…

[…] Vintage Cover Bingo, but I have a feeling he read a lot more than that. The Puzzle Doctor from In Search of the Classic Mystery reviewed 133 books. And Margot Kinberg – well, Margot is incredible! She blogs about multiple […]

Thanks for your ongoing support Mr Puzzle! Just to clarify; ‘Painkiller’ hasn’t been overlooked, as such; it’s just had a ‘soft launch’ in 2016 (which means they chuck it out to selected bloggers with no fanfare). Hopefully now it’s had a proper launch you’ll be seeing a lot more of it!

Well, I can’t say that I understand that logic, but it’s good to know that there was some. And it’s also good to see reviews starting to appear now that all seem to be sharing my opinion of the book. Fingers crossed that it brings you the success that it deserves.